Natural Sciences

Science and technology offer solutions for many problems in the world. With the industrial and life science products developed within our Scientific Solutions Division, we contribute to that. At Olympus, we furthermore believe in the power of innovation and want to foster intelligent ideas. That’s why our aim is to promote the development of young talents and scientists in pushing the boundaries of knowledge. We do this by supporting STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education as well as scholarships for scientists.

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In terms of research: frog skin in a magnified view, displayed with the Olympus FV3000 microscope.

Promoting talent, fostering innovations

To establish contact between Japanese and German schools, the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB) organizes a Science Youth Program for high school students. Olympus provides financial support for the program on two levels.

Immersing oneself in a foreign culture, interacting with peers and building international friendships is a special and often formative experience for school exchange students. The horizon is broadened, new perspectives are unlocked and it is also a whole lot of fun.

In order to initiate permanent contact between Japanese and German schools and to inform about the position of Japan in the field of STEM education, the Japanese-German Center Berlin has established the JDZB (Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin) Science Youth Program for German-Japanese student exchanges. The program is aimed towards upper secondary schools in Germany with Japanese-language classes, all STEM and STEM-friendly schools – those with a highly developed focus on natural sciences. Projects on science or technical themes are to be planed and developed further with a correspondingly oriented partner school in Japan.

Olympus provides financial support to the program and thereby aims to not only support the intercultural exchange but also the scientific-technical projects among the high school students as lived out in daily life by some colleagues. Part of the program also involves a visit to the respective company headquarters in Hamburg and Tokyo.

To increase the attractiveness of gastroenterological endoscopy and promote basic and clinical research in this field, we bestow the Endoscopy Research Award annually.

The Olympus Europa Foundation, together with the German Society for Digestive and Metabolic Diseases (DGVS), awards the Endoscopy Research Award in the field of endoscopy annually. It honors outstanding achievements in the fields of basic and clinical research. Aside from highlighting the achievements of outstanding projects, the Award also aims to increase the appeal of gastroenterological endoscopy for the next generation of medical professionals.

The 2017 winner

Dr. Peter Klare of the Technical University Munich won the Endoscopy Research Award 2017. He was recognized with the Award and also received 15,000 euros for his research into capnography — a special technique used to monitor patients’ state of anesthesia during an endoscopy..

In contrast to the method conventionally used in pulse oximetry, which monitors the oxygen saturation in the patient’s blood, capnography measures the amount of CO2 in the air exhaled. Klare discovered that breaks in or interruptions to the breathing during endoscopy can be detected more easily and quickly with capnography than with pulse oximetry.

Capnography has long been the norm in general anesthesia, but not in endoscopy. “Our findings show that it will be worth giving a lot of thought to making capnographic monitoring a standard method in the future, even for endoscopy under sedation,” Klare explains, summing up why his work was a success. He also explained that the prize would give him an incentive to continue with research in the field of clinical endoscopy.

The 2016 winner

… was Dr. Eugen Zizer of the Center for Internal Medicine at the University Clinic Ulm in Germany. He convinced the jury, which was comprised of renowned gastroenterologists, through his work on the deployment of a so-called overtube system for use during endoscopic submucosal dissections (ESD), produced using a 3D printing process. His conclusion: the overtube system appears to make the ESD technique significantly easier and faster.